


you don't know about me (I bet you want to)

by sparklyslug



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Dating, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:21:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4269948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklyslug/pseuds/sparklyslug
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dating. Going out on dates. It's a thing he can do now. So he's going to fucking do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you don't know about me (I bet you want to)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was published on July 4 as part of the [ Kent Parson fanzine ](http://kentvparson.tumblr.com/post/123171686587/kent-stop-wont-stop-a-kent-parson-fanzine-do), a glorious collection of fic, art, music, and general amazingness in celebration of Kent Parson's birthday. Definitely definitely check out the whole thing, it's absolutely stunning. 
> 
> So endless thanks to Bo for putting the zine together, to defcontwo for betaing this, and to ngozi for giving us this amazing comic and this amazing (???) character.

The realization hits Kent like a bolt from the fucking blue. During a game against the Lightning, appropriately enough.

“What, you gonna make moony eyes at Johnson all night, take him out for a soda pop or something?” Coach snarls, as always somehow able to make the lamest insults still sound terrifying. “Just _hit_ the kid, Parson.”

“Soda pop,” Kent says thoughtfully to himself, squaring up for the faceoff. Johnson gives him a funny look, but Kent wins the drop anyway, so it’s fine.

He doesn’t ask Johnson out for a soda pop. He’s pretty sure ‘going out for soda pop’ isn’t a thing anymore. But if it was, Kent could do it. He could do that now.

So, why the fuck not?

Not with Johnson though. It’s a little weird that Coach even took it there, to be honest.

~

When Kent Parson came out and the world came to a goddamned end, he was understandably not in much of a dating mood for a while. It’s a little hard to be, when you’re more or less surrounded on all sides by flashbulbs going off and people screaming your name. Which yeah, happened _sometimes_ to him before. But he doesn’t live in fucking Montreal, he can have brunch in Vegas without starting a riot.

Or, he could. Before making his mostly-unplanned, very public announcement.

The guys have set him up with every gay cousin they have (surprisingly, there are a hell of a lot of them), so Kent has more numbers in his phone than he knows what to do with, or any idea of how to open up a conversation other than “hey, so your cousin’s a pretty solid D-man, think he’ll get the Norris this year?”

He goes out, he meets guys at clubs and bars and stuff. But he’s not sure how to do it yet, since things are pretty damn different now even if the clubs and bars themselves haven’t really changed. Before, so much of picking up guys came with that built-in turnoff of blind terror over being recognized, or maybe pulling the one scumbag who could really mess up his life. Those aren’t concerns now, but he can’t say that he’s feeling ‘free,’ exactly. Not when the vast majority of the reactions he gets from guys are either tongue-tied shock or a-celebrity-is-talking-to-me preening. He’s not sure which he likes least.

He’s committing himself to this conversation with one of the former, not out of any particular zing that’s happening here, but mostly because the guy is pretty fucking hot. But a few weeks ago, Kent still would have excused himself. And gone to sit with the married guys, to get chirped for being a picky loser for the rest of the night.

But he’s been thinking about this. Soda pop. It’s a thing he can do now. So he might as well fucking do it, right?

Plus, the guy _is_ way hot. Kent’s earned the right to be shallow, he thinks. He’s due some time taking out guys he has no idea what to say to, just because they have a dimple in one cheek and shoulders he can see himself biting.

Maybe he’s done watching guys react to the fact of him in bars or clubs. Maybe it’s time to give them something to _really_ react to. Maybe it’s time to give them _all_ something to react to.

“You want to do something tomorrow?” he says, cutting off the guy mid-stream about some argument he’s having with a neighbor over landscaping. He casts around in his mind for ideas, and grins as he lands on the perfect one. “Mini golf, let’s go mini golfing tomorrow.”

“I—sure?” The guy (who’s named either Luke or Liam) says, definitely thrown. “If you want to?”

“Oh, I definitely do,” Kent says.

~

“How’s it looking out there, Parson?” a reporter asks him, at a bowling alley. “You striking out tonight?”

“Mixing your sports metaphors there, Champ,” Kent says.

“What’s your date’s favorite animal?” One asks, at the zoo.

“Not the Penguins after our last game, that’s for fucking sure,” Kent says.

“Getting a little cross-training in with your friend, Kent?” One asks at a roller rink.

“I’m sorry to report,” Kent says, winded. “That I fucking suck at roller blading. I know, I know, no one’s more surprised than me.”

“Been going on a lot of dinner-and-a-movie nights, Kent,” a pap says, catching him coming out of an afternoon screening. “Got any interest in breaking into Hollywood yourself one day?”

“Nah,” Kent laughs. “I’ve done my time acting.”

The pap’s mouth drops open, and Kent laughs even harder. He throws an arm over his date’s shoulders, and they’ve passed the pap before the guy can recover enough to snap a picture.

~

“Are you making some kind of a statement?” A reporter finally asks at the Coney Island Emporium on the Strip. “Why all these kitschy dates, Kent?”

Kent swallows his mouthful of funnel cake, and looks her dead in the eye.

“Why?” he says. “Because I want to.”

~

Buzzfeed joins the party about a month late, of course, but when they do it’s fucking on point.

“Kent Parson Goes on Every Corny Date in Romcom History,” followed by pap shots and gifs ripped from TMZ of him doing exactly that, set above quotes that he can only assume are mostly from John Hughes flicks.

Kent particularly likes the subhead, writes it out on a piece of paper and takes a selfie with it seconds later.

“Because he’s Kent freaking Parson”

#sotrue #buzzfeed #ugetme

~

It was harder than Kent had expected, to find a place with a Mariachi band in Vegas.

Or, well, one that also has really solid food, at least. Not that he’s trying to psych himself out or anything. But he finds he actually cares if this Oliver guy wants to go out with him again.

“I’d like to hear your entire repertoire,” Kent tells the bandleader seriously, handing over a $100 bill, “If you just start with something by AC/DC.”

The guy considers this. “We can do a pretty solid ‘Thunderstruck’.”

“Perfect.”

“I think I get it,” Oliver says over guacamole, pushing his adorable hipster glasses further up his nose. “The date thing?”

“What, other than the pleasure of a good time with good company?” Kent asks, only a little bit dialing up the charm.

“Other than that,” Oliver laughs. “It’s making up for a lot of lost time, right? All those years you couldn’t be out in the light of day or whatever, like, everything having to be secret and private. You never got that fun, goofy, date-with-your-middle-school-crush thing. I mean, I never did either. But you, uh, especially didn’t. Right?”

Kent considers him, the cute guy in the glasses sitting across from him who likes photography and has seen almost all of the same crappy scifi B-movies Kent has and has never watched a hockey game in his life, who really isn’t his type. Kent considers what passed for ‘dating’ as he’d done it before. With Jack, where they had had practically everything other than a normal dating experience. With the string of more or less unmemorable guys that he still remembers for mostly how terrified he was about all of them.

“So,” Kent says, raising his voice a little over the beginning strains of ‘De Colores’ “How do you feel about laser tag?”


End file.
